"Business Continuity Millennium Exercise" video and unedited footage

Video showing highlights of a business continuity exercise held at Fanhams Hall (Sainsbury’s former management training centre) on 2 August 1999 for Sainsbury’s staff to respond to a disaster scenario which included issues caused by the Millennium Bug (a bug affecting computer systems which stored year dates in a two digit format).

The video was intended to bring the findings of the exercise to a wider audience within the company and make them think about how such problems might affect them in their role.

A fictional scenario with all sorts of problems developed during the course of the exercise including problems with food supplies and distribution, a fire at head office, looting of a store, and a local water supply emergency (which meant the company needed to give away supplies of bottled water to the public). They role-played in groups their response to the events including the actions to take and responses to the media.

An additional 18 videos containing unedited footage, mock news reports and interviews used in making the highlights video are also included in the file. The mock news reports were also used as a part of the exercise and shown on the day to those participating.

Duration: 22 minutes (highlights video) and approximately 8 hours of unedited footage and other production material.